Saturday, October 18, 2008

Lying About Selfishness

I would like to elucidate on the nature of weakness by providing a simple example of combined weaknesses. When one lies about being selfish, one engages in many forms of weakness all at once. The first is to lie to avoid hurting another or yourself, or simply to be malicious. There can be no other reason to do this than sheer ignorance that you are doing it, which is also weak. Now, avoiding hurting others or yourself in actually being honest that you are making a demand on them, usually out of apathy, is cowardice, which is a weakness in any sense. Next, it is often hypocrisy because most people who do this do not realize at all that they are lying, and these people usually will believe that they are not liars or that lying is wrong. It is also weak in denying selfishness as a positive aspect of life: by lying about being selfish, one implicates that it is wrong. It is easy to see that it takes strength, although hardly much, to actually honestly be shamelessly selfish in this instance. Finally, it is weak in that it actually shows that the person expects the other person not to be smart enough to understand they are being lied to when the lie is so absurdly simple. While people may not all be wise enough, even if they do not understand why they are being lied to, if you do it even merely a few times, they will probably resent you for it, whether or not knowing the resentment is because of an obvious lie.